THE WAY WAS EASY on this first stage. They followed the yellow beam of a fading torch through yielding foliage that closed in behind them. The direction was eastward, away from the Casa Alta, but, before the end, Pepe made an abrupt turn to the right and brought them to a cavern-like hole in a creeper-covered wall of rock.
“You must get some sleep,” Pepe ordered. “No one will come here.”
He had the gift of dropping off at will. Lewis followed Leite’s example and spread his poncho so that he could lie on part of it and cover himself with the rest, but neither of the two found it possible to sleep. They waited through the night until Pepe ceased to snore, and that was only when he sprang up, roused suddenly as if by an alarm-clock.
“In a half-hour it will be light,” he announced. “Then we must move.”
He made coffee over a miniature spirit-stove and they ate and drank. Next he apportioned the burdens of each of them, rolling the stores in the ponchos and strapping them so that they could be slung from the shoulder.
Leite had thought of the straps. She had thought, too, of other things: a revolver and cartridges, sharp-edged machetes, a compass, pocket torches, a portable water-bag.
Pepe thrust the revolver into his belt, nodded his grizzled head appreciatively, and twisted his lined, dark-tanned face into a grin.
“We start,” he said.
The faint glimmer of light increased slowly to a green dusk in the first hour, and the way was still comparatively easy. Leite followed the path-finder and Lewis came after her. They had to crush through the meeting fronds of giant ferns and follow a sinuous line between the slender trunks of close-growing trees that rose high in their urge to find light.
Covering the ground was a thick dark litter of fallen leaves through which they must wade as through the water of a shallow ford, but beneath the litter and the pressed layer of mould on which it rested, the earth was firm.
For some time they made good progress. Then their way was hampered by thick screens of twining lianas that hung like giant curtains from the topless trees.
Pepe swung his machete, cutting out a narrow path.
Lewis relieved him after ten minutes, and at the end of a similarly brief spell Leite insisted on taking a turn. Lewis objected. It was man’s work, he argued, but he found no support.
“She would not go back,” Pepe growled. “She must do her share.”
Lewis knew from the aching of his arm that she could not go on for long. He feared that Pepe meant to punish her because he had not wanted her with them, but Pepe was a wise general and watched her carefully.
“Good,” he praised her. “It is true you have strength, but you have done enough. There are hard things ahead of us and you must keep your strength.”
A clearer stretch, a dell of ferns on a gigantic scale, gave them a respite, but presently they came upon more lianas, thicker than they had yet encountered and hung like a tapestry with a crazy pattern of light and shade.
Pepe shook his head, but attacked the tangle. By noon they were exhausted and he called for a rest. While they ate a little bread and cheese and drank from the water bag, he stared at the compass thoughtfully.
“Our course has been nearly straight,” he commented. “If we can keep to the line, we should come out near the river – if we come out at all.”
“How many miles of it are there?” Lewis asked.
“Not many. It is not the miles that matter. Let us go on.”
They had seen no living thing except furtive monkeys and the birds that chattered and screeched and sometimes flashed down from the tree-tops in swift loops of colour; but soon after they started again Pepe killed a small viper.
It was a bad snake, he said, but he was not much concerned. To tread on one was dangerous, but they had the protection of stout leather. “We must be wary. The snakes are wary, too.” He shrugged. “There are not many in this part of the country. I have hunted them. I know. It is not snakes I fear.”
“What do you fear?”
Pepe shook his head, and the furrows of his thin, ageing face were deeper. “All say it is impossible to get through. I have heard you may go so far. Then there is a place that none can pass. Myself, I do not know.”
Leite had not spoken a word since early in the day. She continued in silence, as if breath were too valuable to waste in speech, and now Lewis and Pepe became dumb, affected, perhaps, by the stillness of the green world. In the hot hours of midday the birds had ceased to chatter and screech, and for some time the silence was broken only by the slash or chop of a machete and the slush-slush of booted feet through the litter of leaves.
Occasionally a faint rustle told of an animal in the undergrowth, but they saw nothing. Occasionally a grunt came from Pepe, a commentary that the others might interpret as they wished.
They reached a place where there was no longer the resistance of firm earth beneath them. The mould, packed down by the weight of its own accumulation, yielded like foam rubber. Then it broke under their soles and they plunged ankle-deep in mud.
No ray of the sun could penetrate the lofty ceiling of massed foliage, but the jungle steamed in the heat and its many odours mingled in a heavy emanation that made breathing painful: odours of rot and decay, of growing and flowering things, damp ferns and springing saplings and opulent blossoms. And now the jungle possessed a voice in the humming and droning and reedy whirring of insects.
The three trudged on through the atmosphere of a poisonous vapour-bath, sweat running into their eyes and down their faces. Sweat-sodden clothes clung to their limbs, and every few yards they had to change their burdens from one shoulder to the other.
Leite stumbled, and Lewis reached out to save her from a fall, but only when he felt for her hand and pressed it in encouragement did she turn to look at him. Then there was so much gratitude in her eyes that his quick response of sympathy had an intensity that was new to him.
Pepe called a halt and they sat for a few minutes on the rotting trunk of a fallen tree. They sat with eyes closed to rest them from the strain of peering into the green twilight.
When they went on the quagmire was deeper. The glutinous mass closed on them and clung to them and every step entailed a struggle against the suction. Soon they were sinking to the knees, and the effort to withdraw each encumbered foot became so exhausting that they had to pause every few yards.
Pepe grunted and pointed to the right, and the other two followed him in that direction, knowing that he was seeking higher or firmer ground. Presently he shook his head and tried to the left, but everywhere the bed of the slough seemed to be on one level.
There were no more screening lianas to be slashed and parted, but among the trees the dark shaggy fern-trunks stood like an army of giants in their way.
The mud became less dense, less tenacious. They pushed on hopefully, but another torture lay ahead, and soon they were wading through a thigh-deep swamp, their feet catching in tangled roots while swarms of insects stung their hands and faces.
An hour of it, or hours, perhaps! It did not matter any longer whether you measured time in minutes or ages. Lewis closed his eyes to shut out the green glare. When he again looked ahead through narrow-slitted lids, it seemed that some of the furry-gleaming fern-trunks stood higher than their fellows.
It was no illusion. His feet were trudging up a sunken incline, and presently the water was only ankle deep; and Pepe, who had gained a lead of several yards, was already clear of the swamp.
After that, with a firm base to the spongy carpet of leaf-mould, the going was easy. And the birds had started their chattering and screeching again, as though to cheer the plodders on their way.
Pepe looked anxiously at the other two and once more called a halt. They rested. They drank from the waterbag. They struggled on for another hour, and then their way was blocked by a barrier of creeper.
It might have been because it was something new in their experience that they stared at it with sinking hearts. Always they had seen light through the screens of twining lianas. Always the screens had hung in vertical lines, but this was different.
“Madre de Dios!”
The words from Pepe were a despairing sigh.
This was very different.
The mass seemed to curve outwards from a lofty height as water curves over the brink of a fall. It was a dark static cataract of green and it reached out to the left and the right as far as the eye could penetrate.
The three moved forward through the deepening dusk of the day’s end and saw what they had feared to put into a thought. The mass of creeper hid a perpendicular wall of rock, straight sheared as if by some volcanic freak in the days when the mountains were formed.
Pepe grasped twisted strands of the creeper and climbed hand over hand to test them with his weight. They gave way and he fell, pulling down enough of the greenery to cover him.
“This is our place for the night,” he said, as he thrust the stuff aside. “We will make a fire, but not till it is dark. Then no smoke will be seen.”
“We may have been followed,” Lewis warned him sadly.
“They are not lunatics.” Pepe managed a grin. “We are the only mad ones.”
Lewis moved away and began to gather dry branches. The night came swiftly and they started their fire. They ate and drank. They wrapped themselves in their ponchos while their clothes dried. They rubbed and scraped the mud from their garments and dressed again.
“The fire must be kept going,” Pepe ordered. “Then the wild animals will not trouble us. You and I will take watch and watch, Don Lewis. The señora is to sleep.”
She spoke for the first time in an hour. “I will share.”
“The señora will sleep,” Pepe insisted. “To-morrow we climb the wall. Or we go back. The first watch is mine. I am an old man. I do not need much sleep; only rest for my bones and a moment to think. I will wake you up at eleven, Don Lewis. At two, I will relieve you.”
When Lewis began his turn, Leite was sleeping. The fire had been built up and he saw that it would need no attention for some time. He stood for a while. The dreadful weariness had gone from him, but his body was one ache. He rubbed his stiff limbs and walked a little to get his blood circulating.
He paused beneath the wall and gazed up at it in the light from the fire. His mind was a jumbled fantasy of the day’s pains and toils, but one clear thought rose out of the nightmare blur. To-night the Atacama would be at Cristobal. To-morrow would bring the passage of the Canal.
To-morrow he must reach Trajano . . .
He returned to the fire and sat down, bending with difficulty. He looked into the jungle and saw glowing eyes staring out of the darkness, but they vanished when he shifted. There was no sound in all the stillness except the occasional screech of a night bird and the deep breathing of the sleeping Pepe.
Leite seemed not to breathe at all. He watched for a movement in her throat as if he had to assure himself that she was living. In the deep sleep of exhaustion the marks of strain had gone from her face. He had never seen her so tranquil, so much at peace, and the glow that her cheeks caught from the fire made her seem almost childlike.
It was no wonder, he thought, that Julian had fallen in love with her beauty. This, at least, was clearly feasible, but it gave no clue to her side of the enigma; her neglect of the sick man, her lack of feeling at his death.
Julian himself had sometimes been something of an enigma; secretive, always turning up with surprises . . .
She opened her eyes and Lewis saw that she was looking at him. She brought her hands to her head to smooth the scarf she had tied over her dark hair. She was no longer wearing the wedding ring, but that might be because her hands were scratched and bruised as his own were.
“You have slept well?” he asked.
“Yes.” She answered him coldly. “I will relieve you now.”
“No. You must sleep again.”
“I have no more sleep in me.”
She rose stiffly and picked up her poncho. She shook it, held it to the warmth for a moment, draped it over her shoulders, and moved to the other side of the fire as if she wished to be at a distance from him.
Most of the day she had chosen to isolate herself, but never in so marked a way as this.
She was suffering, blaming herself for their troubles and dangers. Lewis could read the thought as clearly as if she had put it down in words, and because she had been his brother’s wife he wished to comfort her. Whatever she had done to Julian had not been of evil purpose. They had disagreed, no doubt. Disparity of age – she could be little more than thirty – had made adjustment difficult. They had quarrelled, perhaps, and, in ignorance of danger, she had left him in the hands of Pascual.
Lewis watched her in silence, not knowing what to say to her. She had acted to save him from Pascual, but he could only speculate about her motive. There could be no tenderness or care for him, unless she had loved Julian. It might be that there was no tenderness in her; only her pride.
He rose to put wood on the fire, and his movement seemed to startle her. She knelt and stared into the flames, and as he stood close to her, watching the play of light upon her, she covered her face, pressing her hands over her eyes.
It was a gesture of weariness, he thought. Or it was to ease the eyes still tired after the strain of the jungle. He moved away to gather more wood for the fire. When he returned he saw that she was crying.
He was distressed, and in his wish to comfort her he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Leite, what is it?”
The sort of thing that one would say to a hurt child.
He felt the shivering of her body. The draped blanket was cold to his touch. He feared that a chill of fever had gripped her and the fire could not drive it out.
On his knees beside her, he pressed upon her shoulder, drawing her towards him. The gesture was quite instinctive and her response must have been equally instinctive, an automatic yielding to the comforter.
“Leite!” In a long pause he tried to think what to say to her. “You must not give up. We’ll get through to the river. I am sure of it.”
“No.” It was a denial of the thought behind his words. The cause of her distress was not their physical plight, but he had known this and had tried evasion.
He felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm and he desired to draw her closer, to give himself to an emotion that reason told him should be rejected. He was still a stranger to the woman; fundamentally she hated him because he was an interloper. She grasped at him only because she was in despair, unable for the moment to sustain her isolation.
“Forgive me,” she said. “Please forgive me.”
This time he could not misunderstand her. She was admitting her guilt in all that had happened. She waited for him to speak, but he was silent, thinking of Julian, and suddenly she drew away from him sharply. She was erect on her knees for an instant. Then she sank back, huddling under her blanket, and once more her hands covered her face.
He moved from her. He looked up at the green tangled mass of creeper that covered the wall, but he could see only a small part of the barrier. Beyond the unsteady arc of light thrown by the rise and fall of the fire was the night.
When the day came they would find a way to scale this wall. It must end somewhere, and they would follow it to its end. They would push on through the rest of the jungle till they saw the open sky again. But the other barrier, the wall between himself and the woman by the fire, was impregnable.